Deflation and You: A Guide to Understanding this Peculiar Economic Model

I just wanted to share a little bit about deflation. Deflation is when the combined amount of money and credit in an economic system is shrinking, and the velocity of money is stagnant or drops.

Once deflation begins, it is self reinforcing. To see how this works, first think of your own recent spending decisions.

If you are like me, your spending behavior and patterns have probably changed quite a bit since the housing bubble started to bust, and especially since the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit its all time high on October 11, 2007 and then started its wild ride down.

Before you begin to think about your spending behavior, though, one thing must be understood: Money is created by people when they take out loans. People offer up an asset or a promise, which the bank takes and files, and then the bank simply increases the number in their account. That is all there is to it. This might be hard to accept at first, but this is simply how it works in this economic model.

The amount of coins and dollar bills in the economy are a very, very small fraction of the total amount of money out there. Most of what we see as “money” is actually bank credit, which is created when people go to banks, are approved for a loan, and then spend that “money”. If you imagine all those loans, all of them in the country, all at once, that is basically the money supply.

Behind each “dollar” (or bank credit) in a bank account, there is a loan document somewhere that was used to bring that “dollar” (or bank credit) into existence. If the size of all of those loans, let’s just call this the “public debt” for simplicity, if that starts to shrink, for whatever reason, then that means there is less money in the economy. Less money to spend. Less money to earn.

At the moment, the money supply is shrinking because people are behaving perfectly sensibly. They see what is going on with the rising unemployment rate, the falling housing prices, the unstable stock market, the inability of the government to fix it, and the bad economic news that comes out on the TV, the radio, the internet, and in print.

What does a reasonable person do?

How have your thoughts for the future changed since October 2007? Think about that for a moment or two. Then, allow me to examine the top ten ways that I have changed my spending, and my thinking about what things constitute “money”.

1. I don’t think my house is a source of money anymore.

I used to think my house would increase in value, and that I was getting rich by just sitting on it, and that I could take out a huge home equity loan, and buy whatever I wanted.

Today, I think that if I’d take out the “Home Equity Line Of Credit” I’ve been approved for, I would not be able to sell my house for that amount, which is to say, I’d be stuck in my house, unable to sell, with no money. In fact, I don’t want to take any money, not even a penny, out on this “HELOC”.

True story: We were looking to buy a little summer cottage, and so we got this HELOC all set up, and we could have bought the place twice over using that HELOC, but I thought to myself, no way, I’m not doing it, I’m not going to put myself in debt, especially if the job market gets worse, and my wife, or I, or both of us, could lose our jobs. No, I’m not using that HELOC, and I convinced my wife that we shouldn’t use it.

We weren’t willing to bid much on the house, since we were only willing to buy it with money out of our current savings, and so it sold for even LESS than we would have bid, less than if we had been confident about the future.

2. I don’t think that buying a house is a good idea.

I used to think that I could buy a second house, fix it up, use it, and then sell it for a tidy profit. Hey, yo, let’s “flip that house”.

Since 2006, I’ve seen that home prices were going down. And they just keep going down, relentlessly. Why would I buy until I was confident that prices were moving up? How many months of rising home prices would that take? Six months? A year? Why would I buy when there was a good chance that it would be worth less in the future? Why not wait?

And wait we did. We were looking for a second house, that summer home, for two years now, but the housing prices keep going down. Why would we buy?

In looking over the place we were going to buy this summer, we figured up the various monthly and yearly expenses, including taxes, and realized that we were going to be paying $4,000 per year, every year, at a minimum, just to have it.

Why not just rent some place for the week or two that my wife can take off in the summer, and stay at the parents’ house for the few weekends that we might visit?

Why saddle ourselves with another $4,000 annual obligation when the job market is looking worse and worse? We have enough bills as it is, plus two preschoolers to take care of.

No, buying a house is not a good idea, and buying a second house is really not a good idea.

3. I don’t think I’ll be getting any raises in the future.

It used to be that I’d get a 3%, or a 2%, or even a 1% raise to the top step of the salary schedule at the school where I teach.

This year, in negotiating a “master agreement” with the Board of Education, it took us over a year just to get our wages figured out for the year. That was a year beyond the end of our previous agreement. Our negotiating team had to fight tooth-and-nail to get a compensation package that wasn’t all that much worse than previous years.

Then the state came and decided that since our state pension fund had lost billions since October 2007, and since the state was broke, that we needed to contribute more towards the pension that we had already been guaranteed, in a special teacher tax. The government showed that it could, in the swipe of a pen, decrease my salary, and our local negotiations really meant nothing.

I will be bringing home less this year, and the state is likely to try to cut salaries again, as it becomes clear that the budget is getting worse.

If I don’t think I’ll be getting any raises in the future, I’m certainly not going to spend like I’m expecting a raise, in fact, I started saving up, because we will need a cushion in hard times.

4. I don’t see my pension fund, or my social security, as money.

A number of years ago, I was so excited about my state pension, that I “bought” five additional years of service credit, and sent the State thousands of dollars, so that I could either retire earlier, or have a bigger monthly retirement check. This was on top of the thousands that my school district already was sending back each month into “my” pension account.

Now, with all the news coming out about how all of the states are broke, and the pensions are underfunded, I don’t think that any of “my” pension money will be there when I’m old enough to retire.

It’s not “my” money anymore. I gave it to the State. It is gone. And I will probably never get it back.

So, I’m going to have to save for retirement myself, and not in a pension fund.

By the same token, with all the news about the national debt, and social security no longer paying for itself, I don’t think that money will be there either.

The reports showing that most young people don’t expect it to be there, well, that just confirms to me that it probably won’t.

So, I’ll need to start saving up more, on my own.

5. I don’t see my 403(b), mutual funds, or stocks as money anymore.

At one time, we went to a “financial advisor” and agreed to set up a 403(b) investing in mutual funds. We believed that this was basically a sure thing, and sure, there might be dips and bumps, but it was definitely, DEFINITELY, better than keeping our money in a credit union savings account.

But, with the stock markets crashing over 50% from October 2007 to March 2008, I don’t have any faith that my 403(b), or my wife’s large 401(k), which she automatically contributes to each pay period, will be worth anything.

I don’t even know how, or if, she could get out. Can she sell? I don’t know.

If the market crashes, it may never recover, and most or all of that “value” will be gone.

So, we do not have that money for retirement either. Here, we have yet another incentive to save.

6. I don’t think the banks are safe anymore.

I used to think that they were great places to put money, to save up, and at one point we had over a year’s salary in our bank account. I suppose I thought that because I’d opened a passbook savings account when I was about 5 years old, and was always taught to save up for a rainy day.

Now, I see that the banks are being bailed out left and right, and that they are paying their employees huge salaries for doing nothing but draining money from the person on the street.

If any bank tried to sell all of its assets today, or even over the next month, or even the next year, (in the open market, that is), it would get far less cash back than what it owes to its depositors.

The banks are “insolvent”. They are bank-rupt. But the government keeps on trying to “help them”. Plus, more banks fail every single week. Here is the list.

When a local bank failed a few weeks ago, a bank which was flagged as “in trouble” on BankRate.com, and one that I had used as an example of a bank that would fail, well, when it failed, I FELT the failure.

Add to that the fact that the FDIC has used all of its money and is itself broke and is now relying on the government so that it can prevent a bank run.

And still more: I’ve learned that most banks only have as much actual cash as what is in the ATM machines and in the cash drawers. There are no piles of cash in the vaults.

Maybe, MAYBE, there is enough for a week or so of typical withdrawals, based on what they know people tend to take out in cash each week. But that amount is a tiny fraction, well less than 10%, of what the depositors believe to be in their accounts.

Finally, I’ve learned that depositors like us can only take out a certain amount of cash in a given day. At my credit union, the limit is $10,000 cash a day. At a smaller local credit union, the limit is $600 per day. If I had a lot of money “in the bank”, I would not be able to get it out all at once.

All of these facts about banks combine to make me think that my deposits are not safe, and are not money in the same way as I used to think of them.

Obviously, I still think it is slightly safer, or more convenient, to have “money” in the bank, but only barely so. If I could figure out a way to save that money myself, and keep it safe from theft or fire, then I would only have as much in the bank as was necessary for paying bills.

7. I don’t think of my gold coins as money anymore.

I used to think, when their prices were going up, that gold coins were so great, and a great investment. In fact, I bought in 2005, and now in 2010, those few coins have more than doubled in “value”. There are websites galore that say “Buy Gold”, and signs in shop windows that say “We Buy Gold”, and everyone seems to think that “gold is REAL money”.

But I’ve very recently realized that if there were a banking system failure, and people only had cash and gold coins to use as money, that the value of those coins would drop like a stone, because all the people that end up running out of cash would then be pulling out their coins to use as money, and this would happen all at once. The value of the coins would fall rapidly as they flooded the market, and my “doubling of value” would end up being “took a bath”.

Interestingly, the American Gold Eagle 1-ounce coins do have a $50 mark on them. Perhaps they will not fall in value below that. That is some cold comfort with gold selling for over $1,200 per ounce right now.

The fact that I have them in the bank, and the bank could close at any minute, makes me less and less confident that I could use them as money. Also, the last time there was a major crash in the markets, back in 1929, the President of USA ordered all the safe-deposit boxes sealed, and all the gold coins confiscated and sold for a rate that the Government selected (See Executive Order 6102).

8. I don’t think of our personal possessions as money.

I used to count the cars, the appliances, the electronics, the furnishings, the lawn tractor, even my clothes, as money. I could put them up for sale, and get a decent price, especially for the cars. In fact, I vaguely remember making a spreadsheet on the computer, listing all these sorts of things as part of my “net worth”.

Now, everyone is starting to look broke.

There are tons of used cars on the market.

People only want things for free off FreeCycle or Craigslist.

My DVD collection isn’t work $20 per DVD, like I used to figure. The video store chain in my area went out of business, and those same DVD’s wouldn’t even sell for $5.

I’ve been to some garage sales this year, and second hand stores, and arts and craft shows, and flee markets, and I start to recognize that most of this stuff is literally value-less, despite what it might have sold for in the past.

My personal possessions are no longer money.

9. I don’t think I’ll get any inheritance anymore.

For a couple of years, I received an “inheritance” check from my grandmother. Her stocks were doing well. Her house was increasing in value. She was healthy and happy. And this could have continued; I expected that, and I think my family did as well.

Now, my grandmother is in the medical care facility which costs thousands of dollars per month. The stocks had to be sold, and they had lost lots of value before that.

My grandmother’s house has now been vacant for years, and the most recent attempt to sell it, for a new lower price, fell through.

I won’t be getting any more checks. In fact, my wife and I have talked about saving up some money for my grandmother, in the case that she completely runs out, because her diminishing cash reserves are going fast.

And while I know that my parents are healthy and will live for another twenty or more years, I no longer see their house as increasing in value until then.

No, the values of homes are falling everywhere, and unlikely to even return to those 2006 levels. Historically, some housing bubbles have been so big that it has taken hundreds of years to return to the same level.

So, no “inheritance”, which means even less money in the future.

10. I’m not spending money.

A while back, my wife and I made a nice long list of home improvements, trips we’d like to take, things we’d like to buy, and painted some pictures in the air of a fancy-dancy future: a new barn, a new carpet, a new hardwood floor, a new addition, a new fireplace, etc.

We aren’t spending on those things because we think we need to have some extra money saved up, in the event that one or both of us lose our jobs, as we would need if for food, health care, taxes, and all those other bills.

We are saving. We are not spending, not really.

Everyone Is Doing It

If this story resonates with you, it is because parts of it resonate with all of us. We are the ones who have the capacity to spend, and yet, we save instead. We could increase the money supply by signing up for loans, and buying things, but we are not.

We are doing what anyone would do. The prudent thing. The logical thing. The responsible thing. The sensible thing.

But we are all doing this at the same time, including all of the businesses, and that is causing the money supply to shrink, day after day, and each new day makes us want to save more, and each new day we feel more that we need to get out, or stay out, or debt.

All of that money we are saving, those of us lucky enough to be able to save, that money goes into the banks, the same banks that are insolvent, and they can’t get rid of it, because no one who is sensible will borrow it. They won’t touch it with a 10-foot pole.

The banks -which are insolvent, with less in assets than they owe in deposits-, when they get in money, they have to find something to do with it, so they buy Treasury bonds, which “earn” the banks interest, and which are very safe bets. Contrast this with the choice of offering up subprime loans, or alt-A loans, or jumbo loans, or any of those. They aren’t stupid. They know that they might not be able to sell those things anymore. They know those mortgages would be risky at best. They do the prudent thing and raise lending standards, and look elsewhere for profits.

“Go Out and Spend”

Savings in a bank, just like savings under the bed, are not being used to buy things, so it is as if that money did not exist. It has the potential to be money, but if it is not spent, then it can not be earned by someone else.

This lack of spending is slowing down the speed (velocity) at which money moves in the economy. It is the same as if there were actually less money.

Right now, both things are happening at once. The money supply, or credit supply, is shrinking because few loans are being created, and consequently, that money is not being used to purchase things AND the “velocity of money” is slowing because people are not spending at the rate that they once did.

Now, these two are really the same thing, what we’re talking about is how much you are buying this year, as compared to, say, 2006. And not just you, of course, but everyone. And we’re not just looking at “net income” paycheck money here, no, we’re also looking at how much you, and me, and other people, are spending out of credit sources… whether they are increasing their debt load to buy things, like in 2006, or decreasing their debt load by paying off that debt, and not spending, like now.

Most important to this is that so many people continue to pay down the principle on their mortgages, while very few new mortgages are being created to make up the difference. The money goes into the banks, and never comes out.

As mortgages are paid down, the mortgage documents, also known as promissory notes, become worth less; their value as an asset is less.

An example: image that a person pays off $500 in principal on their mortgage. Now, that mortgage document is worth $500 less than the day before. If no one takes out a loan of at least $500 to replace that, then this $500 is gone from the money supply.

Remember that it is the total value of all the mortgages, the public debt, that determines the money supply.

As everyone is “getting out of debt”, the money supply is shrinking.

Money is literally debt, in this peculiar economic model at least.

And as we all engage in this very, very, sensible, reasonable, logical paying down of debt, preparing for tough times, so too does everyone else, which means that people are spending less, so businesses are earning less, and then they have less to pay employees, and then those employees are either laid off, or their hours or wages are cut, so they can spend less, and then we see the unemployment report on the TV, and we all tighten our belt one more notch, and then we save a bit more, and we spend a bit less, and the businesses…

This is a vicious cycle which is self reinforcing. It is a positive feedback mechanism.

There is not a single thing that the political candidates, or the bank presidents, or the Federal Reserve chairman, or the Treasury secretary, or the President of the USA can do to make us stop acting sensibly.

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There is NO EVIDENCE that the Bible is from or inspired by a God, or that either of these two man-made biblical scriptures -- foundational to Christianism -- is true: Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that He gave is only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." NONE.

Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so. ~Robert Ingersoll

All religion is a foolish answer to a foolish question. ~Thomas Shelby

The strongly religious fear our capacity for moral reasoning that does not require a magical, invisible deity. They fear our ability to be ethical without the threat of hell or the reward of heaven. They fear that our allegiance is not to this or that country, or this or that prophet, or this or that guru, but to humanity as a whole. ~Phil Zuckerman

The idea that God could only forgive our sins by having his son tortured to death as a scapegoat is surely, from an objective point of view, a deeply unpleasant idea. If God wanted to forgive us our sins, why didn’t he just forgive them? Why did he have to have his son tortured? ~Richard Dawkins

Small is beautiful, when small is skilled and dedicated. ~Gene Logsdon

All religions are lies and scams, and all believers are victims. ~David Silverman

We [atheists] have no martyrs, we have no saints. ~Christopher Hitchens

Morality is doing right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right. ~H L Mencken

I've observed that people tend to live at one of two extremes in the spectrum of life: those who live on the edge, and those who avoid the edge. Those who live on the edge are hanging out in the most dangerous and unstable places — yet they're also often the most powerful agents of change, because the edge is where change is happening; away from the edge, things are naturally unchanging. ~Thom Hartmann

Religion. It's given people hope in a world torn apart by religion. ~Jon Stewart

My 12th year was my most Christian and most boring year in my life. ~Chuck Berry

Come on. You just can’t come up with anything more ridiculous than someone who honestly thinks that all human woes stem from an incident in which a talking snake accosted a naked woman in a primeval garden and talked her into eating a piece of fruit. ~Keith Parsons

When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything. ~Umberto Eco

Christians don’t need to be born again, they need to grow up. ~John Shelby Spong

Life is not a problem to be solved, nor a question to be answered. Life is a mystery to be experienced. ~Alan Watts

Society is like a stew: If you don't stir it up every now and then, the scum rises to the top.~Edward Abbey

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. ~Buckminster Fuller

How thoughtful of God to arrange matters so that, wherever you happen to be born, the local religion always turns out to be the true one. ~ Richard Dawkins

I’m not saying there isn’t a god, but there isn’t a god who cares about people. And who wants a god who doesn’t give a shit? ~Robert Munsch

One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion. ~Arthur C. Clarke

Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; Give him a religion, and he'll starve to death
while praying for a fish. ~ Anon

When you understand why you dismiss all the other gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. ~ Stephen Roberts

Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning. ~ Joseph Campbell

The only true definition of an atheist: a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in God or gods. ~Oxford English Dictionary

You have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

Faith is just another word for gullibility.

I sang as one / Who on a tilting deck sings / To keep men's courage up, though the wave hangs / That shall cut off their sun. ~C. Day Lewis

Resilience Tools (Basic)

Freethought/Stoics

Religion Divides

The Wikipedia of Christian Terrorism (Link)

Books of the Freethinkers Bible

What is a fact beyond all doubt is that we share an ancestor with every other species of animal and plant on the planet. We know this because some genes are recognizably the same genes in all living creatures, including animals, plants and bacteria. And, above all, the genetic code itself — the dictionary by which all genes are translated — is the same across all living creatures that have ever been looked at. We are all cousins. Your family tree includes not just obvious cousins like chimpanzees and monkeys but also mice, buffaloes, iguanas, wallabies, snails, dandelions, golden eagles, mushrooms, whales, wombats and bacteria. All are our cousins. Every last one of them. Isn't that a far more wonderful thought than any myth? And the most wonderful thing of all is that we know for certain it is literally true...

The whole world is made of incredibly tiny things, much too small to be visible to the naked eye — and yet none of the myths or so-called holy books that some people, even now, think were given to us by an all-knowing god, mentions them at all! In fact, when you look at those myths and stories, you can see that they don't contain any of the knowledge that science has patiently worked out. They don't tell us how big or how old the universe is; they don't tell us how to treat cancer; they don't explain gravity or the internal combustion engine; they don't tell us about germs, or anesthetics. In fact, unsurprisingly, the stories in holy books don't contain any more information about the world than was known to the primitive peoples who first started telling them! If these 'holy books' really were written, or dictated, or inspired, by all-knowing gods, don't you think it's odd that those gods said nothing about any of these important and useful things? -Richard Dawkins

Prayer seems to me a cry of weakness, and an attempt to avoid, by trickery, the rules of the game as laid down. I do not choose to admit weakness. I accept the challenge of responsibility. Life, as it is, does not frighten me, since I have made my peace with the universe as I find it, and bow to its laws… It seems to me that organized creeds are collections of words around a wish. I feel no need for such.

I know that nothing is destructible; things merely change forms. When the consciousness we know as life ceases, I know that I shall still be part and parcel of the world. I was a part before the sun rolled into shape and burst forth in the glory of change. I was, when the earth was hurled out from its fiery rim. I shall return with the earth to Father Sun, and still exist in substance when the sun has lost its fire, and disintegrated into infinity to perhaps become a part of the whirling rubble of space. Why fear? The stuff of my being is matter, ever changing, ever moving, but never lost; so what need of denominations and creeds to deny myself the comfort of all my fellow men? -Zora Neale Hurston

Democratic Socialism

Socialist Alternative is the organization that spearheaded the campaign to elect Kshama Sawant to Seattle City Council, the first independent socialist elected in a major U.S. city in decades. We are a national organization fighting in our workplaces, communities, and campuses against the exploitation and injustices people face every day. We are community activists fighting against budget cuts in public services; we are activists campaigning for a $15/hour minimum wage and fighting, democratic unions; we are people of all colors speaking out against racism and attacks on immigrants, students organizing against tuition hikes and war, women and men fighting sexism and homophobia.

We believe the Republicans and Democrats are both parties of big business, and we are campaigning to build an independent, alternative party of workers and young people to fight for the interests of the millions, not the millionaires.

We see the global capitalist system as the root cause of the economic crisis, poverty, discrimination, war, and environmental destruction. As capitalism moves deeper into crisis, a new generation of workers and youth must join together to take the top 500 corporations into public ownership under democratic control to end the ruling elites’ global competition for profits and power.

We believe the dictatorships that existed in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were perversions of what socialism is really about.

We are for democratic socialism where ordinary people will have control over our daily lives.

An atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that deed must be done instead of prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated. ~Madalyn Murray O'Hair, Founder

In the history of the world, the number of times a supernatural anything has been proven true is zero. Every god, ghost, spirit, devil, possession, and miracle ever claimed true is a lie. No exceptions. The number of times an atheistic (godless) argument has been proven wrong by a theistic argument is zero... In contrast, every time a theist-versus-atheist argument has been settled, an atheistic argument has won. This does not mean science is antireligion; it just means (or rather, strongly implies) religion is wrong... I challenge anyone to find any scientifically valid testable proof of anything supernatural, ever. If you can prove it, even once, I'll quit my job. I'm not nervous, as it has never been done in history, because it's ALL a lie. ~David Silverman, President

Local Organic Family Farms

THE SMALL ORGANIC FARM greatly discomforts the corporate/ industrial mind because the small organic farm is one of the most relentlessly subversive forces on the planet. Over centuries both the communist and the capitalist systems have tried to destroy small farms because small farmers are a threat to the consolidation of absolute power.

Thomas Jefferson said he didn’t think we could have democracy unless at least 20% of the population was self-supporting on small farms so they were independent enough to be able to tell an oppressive government to stuff it.

It is very difficult to control people who can create products without purchasing inputs from the system, who can market their products directly thus avoiding the involvement of mercenary middlemen, who can butcher animals and preserve foods without reliance on industrial conglomerates, and who can’t be bullied because they can feed their own faces. ~Eliot Coleman